[lestatar]

Hello all, new here and a new Kindle3 Wifi owner [pretty damm happy too, as I am a prolific reader but have resisted purchasing a true ebook reader until now]. Incredible forum here but I have not yet had a chance to really dig through everything thus far. So, please pardon me if the questions below have already been answered elsewhere - maybe some kind peeps here can point out specific forum threads which may be of use to me. And sorry for the long-winded post.

Anyway, as the title indicates, I am seeking the advice for some best practices/SOP re: Kindle and especially ebook metatagging, etc.

I am excessively anal about my ID3 tags for my music collection as well as my music filenames. Everything is exactly the way I want it and there are no surprises for me when I play music on any digital device. I would like to do a similar thing for my Kindle.

I am very familiar with many of the ebook readers/utilities but have been unclear on any actual metatagging standards [or even how that stuff works for ebooks - there is no actual ebook tagging standard a la ID3 for music files is there?]. calibre, MobiPocket Creator/Reader, ABC converters, etc... are especially old friends to me though.

The free email service from Amazon for PDF/document conversion is great so far as I am not especially a fan of the inability to resize PDF text on the Kindle - the free conversion to adjustable AZW format is terrific. However, I encountered a few surprises in my first batch of PDF conversions, especially insofar as book covers and metatags.

I initially used calibre to exactly edit the metatag info/book covers on my PDFs before sending them to Amazon. When I got the AZW files back and reviewed a few of them in calibre, tags like Book Title and Author had changed, as well as the covers I had put on the PDFs. I then had to go back in calibre and re-edit stuff the way I wanted it so the book listing on the Kindle is consistent with how I prefer.

The questions:
- why does Amazon conversion service mess with my ebook tags/covers and is there any way to prevent this or...
- should I simply edit my tags at the end, when I receive the AZW files?
- what is the best pixel size/file size/image format for book covers on Kindle3?
- it seems a few converted AZW files don't properly display book JPG covers added via calibre...any idea what I am doing wrong?
- what is the normal SOP for most people with regards to tags/covers on Kindle?

Again, sorry to be so long-winded and apologies if these questions are redundant.

cheers and TIA for any help/advice/info,
-les